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Child Labor Found in Shanghai and Wuhan, Following Earlier Reports on Scandal in Guangdong

November 25, 2008

Reports of the employment of underage workers in factories in Shanghai and Wuhan emerged in October, according to October 6 reports from Civil Rights & Livelihood Watch (CRLW) and Radio Free Asia, as well as an October 21 report from the Hong Kong-based China CSR and an October 9 entry from a well-known Chinese blog. In Shanghai, a 15-year-old laborer died from wounds suffered at the hands of coworkers at a pipe valve factory earlier this year, while a local blogger exposed several cases of child labor in Wuhan factories in October.

Reports of the employment of underage workers in factories in Shanghai and Wuhan emerged in October, according to October 6 reports from Civil Rights & Livelihood Watch (CRLW) and Radio Free Asia, as well as an October 21 report from the Hong Kong-based China CSR and an October 9 entry from a well-known Chinese blog. In Shanghai, a 15-year-old laborer died from wounds suffered at the hands of coworkers at a pipe valve factory earlier this year, while a local blogger exposed several cases of child labor in Wuhan factories in October. These reports follow a child labor scandal in Guangdong that attracted international attention in late spring of this year. Chapter 2 Article 15 of the PRC Labor Law prohibits the employment of minors under the age of 16. The PRC Law on the Protection of Minors and the Provisions on the Prohibition of Using Child Labor also include similar protections for minors.

The Hubei provincial government now reportedly is taking steps to address the use of child labor, according to the China CSR report. However, the October 9 blog entry that reportedly prompted the Hubei government to take action, appears to have been removed from the blogger's Web site, Wang Haofeng Jujiao Zhanbao (Wang is the name of the blogger). A Web site called China Crossroads that promotes corporate social responsibility in China reported on Wang's investigation and posted a rough English translation of his original Chinese language report. Wang's blog includes another report dated June 23 that documents the use of underage workers at a business that offers traditional Chinese medical treatments in Wuhan.

The October incidents follow reports of child labor earlier in the year. In April 2008, an investigative report by the Southern Metropolis Daily (SMD) uncovered a trafficking network operating in the city of Dongguan in Guangdong province in which hundreds of child laborers were sold to factories and workshops throughout the Pearl River Delta. Minors were transported more than 1,300 miles from the Liangshan Yi autonomous prefecture, an impoverished ethnic minority region in Sichuan province, to work in the factory towns of Guangdong. SMD journalists met firsthand with child workers as young as 8 years old, though most were between the ages of 13 to 15. Traffickers who recruited the children and served as intermediaries to prospective employers reportedly admitted to falsifying the children's household registration papers to make them appear to be 18. One underage worker indicated that overseers employed death threats to deter them from trying to escape. Another alleged that some girls had been sexually assaulted by their overseers.

SMD reporters spoke with a former overseer who characterized the underground network as a well-organized and "powerful force," primarily comprised of former child workers who grew up in Liangshan. According to a May 10 New York Times (NYT) report, a primary school teacher from Erwu village in Liangshan lamented that she lost 16 of her 30 students over the past year, most of whom had left the area in search of employment. The ages of the teacher's students mostly ranged from 12 to 14 years old. More than 10 families in Liangshan interviewed by the NYT told of underage children who had left home to work in factories.

The government's response to the labor scandal was characterized by contradictory statements. The day after the scandal broke, Dongguan police reported that the initial round of their investigation had identified 167 workers from Liangshan, the majority of whom were believed to be underage, according to an April 30 SMD report (reprinted on Sohu). On May 1, Dongguan officials told the South China Morning Post (SCMP - subscription required) that around 20 officials from Liangshan had been dispatched to Dongguan to assist in the rescue of the children. In an April 30 report from the China Daily, a spokesperson for the town of Shipai in Dongguan municipality said that police had rescued "more than 100 youngsters" in his township alone and arrested several people in connection with the scandal. Liangshan authorities also claimed that 66 underage workers had returned from Dongguan following the initial investigation, according to a May 7 SCMP report. A Dongguan official quoted in a May 1 SMD report revealed that Liangshan authorities had already identified four individuals suspected of abducting children to work in Dongguan factories.

Two days after the scandal first broke, however, the SMD also reported that Guangdong authorities began to issue statements that described the scale of the child labor problem in terms that contradicted earlier reports. At a press conference on April 30, the vice mayor of Dongguan, Li Xiaomei, claimed that a two-day "preliminary investigation" of 3,629 enterprises throughout the city failed to find "large-scale use of child labor." Li allowed for the possibility that child laborers might be employed in smaller enterprises or workshops in which "underground intermediaries" are commonly used to recruit workers, but she added that no "substantial evidence" was available at present to support such a claim, according to the May 1 SMD report. The Dongguan government neither detailed the methods used in their investigation nor issued a report of its findings, which raises questions about the thoroughness and rigor with which it was conducted.

On May 2, the SMD (reprinted on Sina) reported that Premier Wen Jiabao directly ordered an investigation into the scandal, but also stressed the importance of "preventing speculation." A spokesperson for the Guangdong provincial government, Li Shoujin, was quoted in a May 7 SCMP report as saying the original SMD reports were "inauthentic." Li further claimed that police had found only six underage workers in three factories in Dongguan, none of whom had been raped or abducted, according to the Guangdong Emergency Management Office. According to a July 19 China CSR report, the Dongguan government issued an opinion on July 14 stipulating that individuals who recruit child laborers would be fined 5,000 yuan (US$733) per child, factories that employ child laborers would face the same penalty levied for each month the child was employed, and employment agencies that recruit child laborers would be shut down. An investigation of 124 employment agencies in Dongguan reportedly yielded only 10 child laborers employed by six companies.

As reported in the Congressional-Executive Commission on China 2008 and 2007 Annual Reports, a similar pattern of conflicting accounts emerged from the May and June 2007 brick kiln scandal in Shanxi and Henan provinces. Officials involved in the brick kiln scandal were given lenient punishments such as demotion or dismissal from their posts rather than prison sentences or capital punishment, according to a February 2008 CECC analysis.

For more information on child labor and forced labor in China, please see Section II -- Worker Rights, in the Congressional-Executive Commission on China's CECC 2008 Annual Report.